Why Change Is So Hard (And The Best Way To Make It Easy)

Betty winced hard as if her skin had been pierced by a deep dull needle. She had sworn over and over that she wouldn’t do it. But here she was, again caught in a web of self-seduction driven by fear and greed. “Why is it so hard?” she thought as she looked at the trade that she had just closed. She had input a limit order to buy 3 contracts of the NQ as the price action was about to hit a demand level on the 60 minute chart. She had meticulously determined from her daily and weekly charts that a significant demand zone was about to be retested. The lines had been drawn and her plan; as it usually did, outlined in precise terms her entry, rationale, targets and scale points. Actually, the plan was flawless as evidenced by the fact that the price action did exactly as she had foreseen. And, if she had not exited the trade prematurely the market would have proven the plan to be correct. But, regrettably, she became more and more frightened as the price action breathed until it became unbearable whereby she gave into the pressure and exited the trade for a miniscule profit only to watch it take off like a towering green bamboo shoot rising from her exit. In this instance like so many times before she had let herself down; and she felt stupid, depressed and desperate to know how to stop this madness.

Change, as Betty had experienced, can be difficult. But, why is it so hard to just do what you say you want to do and not do what you say you don’t want to do? Firstly humans are creatures of habit. Doing the same thing in the same ways fosters a level of familiarity and comfort…even those habits that are not in your best interest. Comfort and pleasure are what you seek and by the same token you want to avoid discomfort and pain. Now, what is paradoxical is that in your determination to avoid discomfort and pain you’ll actually cause it; as Betty did, by succumbing to ego-driven defense mechanisms that had been created ostensibly when you were quite young and that are now running roughshod over you to make sure that you don’t “get yourself into trouble.” How does this happen? Well, when you were young, let’s say a toddler, and you broke something that mommy really liked, so you were yelled at and felt shamed; or in early elementary school and you were called upon to answer a question and you didn’t know the answer prompting cruel laughter fro9+-m your classmates and a stern disapproving look from the teacher, you felt humiliated. Then, your all protecting ego would say, “…see, you are bad because you made mommy angry so you mustn’t play or you’ll get hurt,” or “…you are not smart so you must be quiet so that you don’t get hurt again.” These experiences and others like them create what is called a neural network of encoded sense stimulations of these experiences/events; in other words everything that you saw, heard, felt, smelled and tasted along with thoughts and emotions become connected. This neural network of brain cells are connected electromagnetically and electrochemically to these sensory stimulations and will “fire” every time a similar experience/event happens in your life. So, as you grow, similar things happen, you break something, or people laugh at you, or you do something that otherwise incurs the ire of those in authority or that you look up to. Then your ego says, “…see, I told you, that is not for you to do because you are not good enough, smart enough, talented enough or deserving, or whatever else it might have associated to this original experience. These become unconscious conversations that lurk below your awareness level and that conjure up all manner of additional negative emotions like disappointment, rejection, anger, frustration and many others. This is how neural networks get connected to other neural networks and they form very strong barriers between you and effectively challenging yourself in order to grow. These neural networks that continue to fire together will “hardwire” together meaning that they become like a well worn trail or a deep rut or cavernous scratch in a vinyl record. When that happens the default behavior then becomes avoidance and anxiety based. You are then operating from a position of fear. This type of default behavior strives to remain in the comfort zone where there is no growth. You cannot grow in your comfort zone, you must get out. Growth requires stretching, tearing, and breaking out of old tissue physiologically and old psychic constrictions psychologically.

To put it another way, as you grow from a child, you form relationships with everything around you, people, places, things, creatures and the like. Each one of these relationships has an internal depiction or neural network that is constructed by all the chemical reactions in your brain that include feelings and emotions. If you change that relationship then the network breaks and reforms. Think of how it feels to break up in a relationship with someone. It is quite painful and fraught with emotional turmoil, and that is a good break-up. That is how change occurs on any level of your thinking, feeling and doing. When you are doing battle in the trader trenches it is crucial that you do so with your highest and best self…your A-Game. Of course, in order to do this you must continue to create the conditions in your mind to manifest the results that you want.

Written by Dr. Woody Johnson, Online Trading Academy Instructor. Dr. M. Woodruff Johnson has actively and successfully traded stock options, forex and futures since 2000. He is the former Executive Director of the Kaiser Permanente, Watts Counseling and Learning Center. He holds certifications in Accelerated Learning, Neurosensory Development and hypnotherapy, and he is a Certified NLP Master Practitioner. Dr. Woody is also an Associate Professor and teaches graduate psychology courses at Pacific Oaks College and Ryokan College. He has provided clinical staff services in hospitals and community clinics as well. He has a passion for helping others to achieve their goals and get the results in trading and life that they desire. Dr. Woody has been using mind/body healing techniques both professionally and personally with much success for many years. He is the author of “From Pain to Profit: Secrets of the Peak Performance Trader.”

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